He was so fucking evil that even the other Europeans, who were also racists, were like "Wtf is wrong with this dude?". He was so brutal that they invented the term "Crimes against Humanity" to describe his crimes. Eventually, basically all the political parties voted to buy the Congo from him and tell him to fuck off, while they removed him from power and even voted to end slavery in the Belgian Congo, they never enforced that and continued to promote racial laws and slavery there.
When you're so racist that even the racists start considering the people you're killing as human because even they wouldn't dare do the same brutal shit.
George Washington Williams was born free in 1849 in Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania, to two African Americans. During the American Civil War, Williams ran away to enlist at the age of 14 in the Union Army under an assumed name; he fought during the final battles.
After the war, Williams went to Mexico, where he was among Americans who joined the Republican Army under the command of General Espinosa, fighting to overthrow Emperor Maximilian. In the late 1880s, Williams turned his interest to Europe and Africa. After having been impressed by meeting King Leopold II of Belgium, he traveled in 1890 to the Congo Free State (then owned by the king) to see its development.
Shocked by the widespread brutal abuses and slavery imposed on the Congolese, he wrote an open letter to Leopold in 1890 about the suffering of the region's native inhabitants at the hands of the king's agents. This letter, which subsequently popularized the term "crimes against humanity", was a catalyst for an international outcry against the regime running the Congo, which had caused millions of deaths.
This was an early but not, as is often claimed, the first use of the term in its modern sense in the English language. In his first annual message in December 1889, U.S. President Benjamin Harrison spoke about the slave trade in Africa as a "crime against humanity". Already in 1883, Williams had used the same term in his reflections about slavery in the United States.
Williams seems like a really cool guy, after his letter the term begun to be used during the Hague Convention.
He was so fucking evil that even the other Europeans, who were also racists, were like "Wtf is wrong with this dude?". He was so brutal that they invented the term "Crimes against Humanity" to describe his crimes. Eventually, basically all the political parties voted to buy the Congo from him and tell him to fuck off, while they removed him from power and even voted to end slavery in the Belgian Congo, they never enforced that and continued to promote racial laws and slavery there.
When you're so racist that even the racists start considering the people you're killing as human because even they wouldn't dare do the same brutal shit.
Williams seems like a really cool guy, after his letter the term begun to be used during the Hague Convention.